happy halloween!

.... from our family, to yours.

(Yes, the 2 year old is naked.  Had the others been organized, not 5 minutes sooner, she would have been seen in pirate costume... but them's the breaks, I guess!  And yes, my hubs is "God's gift to women" - hee hee.)

What's everyone else wearing today?

Seasonal inspiration: let me wine & dine you!

Some of the CSS girls are sharing their favorite season of the year, and drawing inspiration from this photo to bring you a special project:

I think I spoiled the suprise by posting the photo above *wink.*  A Canadian through and through, I love winter.  I love the first snow-fall, the silverly, glistening, white banks... the kids sledding and laughing in their gigantic snowsuits... but most of all, I love to stay indoors in the winter, by a crackling fire, with some warm & delicious drink in hand - ha!  (ahhh, the magic of the season.)

So, for my project, I am bringing you a winter gift, to be able to "wine & dine" someone special:

A bottle of red wine, a gift card to your favorite restaurant, and a cozy card filled with all the "sweet nothings" you don't always say out loud... hee.

I love a cozy plaid for winter - don't you?  I used the new-to-me "create-a-plaid" to create my background.  I inked up a warm red, and two tones of grey ink to create the look.  I then die-cut a tags #1 shape, and stamped it with the coordinating frame.  I also stamped the cookie-tree, and a sentiment (from "cookie bake").  Everything on the tag was white-heat-embossed.

The same steps were taken to create the bottle tag, except that I stamped the snowflake cookie in grey ink instead of the tree.

Thanks for popping by!  These other designers all have fun projects to show off:

Jaclyn

Kim

Tracy

Dana

Jen

Laurie

Lori

Audrey (guest designer)

CSS

a foxy christmas.

Good Monday morning!

Here's another card that we created at my most recent Christmas card class.  It was inspired by *this card* of Yainea's.  She's brilliant, and if you've never stopped by her blog, please take a peek.  The cute things she does with lawn fawn stamps are incredible!

I actually have to admit to liking her card better than mine, but it was fun to turn her fall card into a Christmas-themed one.

Thanks for peeking!

Thanksgiving place-cards {CSS app}

We've already celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, but if you're still looking for quick and easy Thanksgiving place-card ideas, pop on over to CSS app:

Click on the image to be taken to the app store, and download it to see more of my Thanksgiving spread!

Have a great weekend, all!

monster-carnival party decorations.

Hi peeps!

It's been awhile, but do you remember the monster-carnival invitations I posted?  I know you've been waiting with bated breath for me to post the rest of the decorations...

 Here's the whole lot - Do you see the cake-stand on the right with the piles of banners?  Because, how are you supposed to photograph 10 banners?  hee.

 I took cues from the invitation to create this fun food-table banner.  Each panel was way too large for me to use any existing stripe stamps, so it was me, a black copic, and a ruler to get 'er done.  worked perfectly.

 All of the food & treat items were given labels (love all of the names that my client came up with - I'm pretty sure that "monster hair" is for some kind of licorice, and not for, say... pasta.  but I could be wrong.)

 I have a few milk bottles lying around, so I thought I'd show you what the drink labels would look like....

 but there are a few more...

 These guys are getting slapped on little treat boxes... some of them ended up with black teeth, which is cracking me up.  Ahhhh ,the beauty of handmade!

 If there were a plate of monster cookies in front of me right now, I'd be chomping down on them like that monster...

 Of course, every carnival guest needs their own little baggie of carnival tickets... and fun tags to go with...

 mmmm.... monster tongues.  for those round, foot-long gum dispensers...

This is one of the 10 banners that were folded up in a pile in that first photo.  They will each hang over their own carnival game booth.

I hope you enjoyed your walk-through the decorations!  I'm looking forward to seeing some photos of the party after this weekend (*squints eyes at Lisa*)  It's gonna be huge!

Have a great weekend, all!

Papertrey Ink October Blog Hop

Are you surprised to see me here?  yeah, me too... it's been so long!

But, the challenge was to create holiday cards, and I have card classes going on in which we're making holiday cards, so....

I chose to be inspired by this color scheme:

(and, when I say "inspired by," I mean that I started out with aqua mist and smokey shadow inks, and a patterned paper that has soft stone stripes in it, but I couldn't find anything in my stash that looks like ocean tides... is that okay?)

 I went the non-coloring route with the house from "boards and beams."  I stamped it in a dark grey ink onto a piece of white cardstock, and then stamped the snow flurry (from lawn fawn's "let it snow") over-top in a watermark ink.  After sprinkling it with white embossing powder, and heat setting it, I rubbed a blue distress ink over the area, making it look like a little snow-globe-in-a-polaroid.

 The sentiment, from "home for the holidays," was stamped in grey onto the polaroid frame.  I added a little fishtail of silver glimmer paper for holiday sparkle, and some yarn for winter coziness.

I hope you like it!  Happy hopping!